1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to telecommunication systems, and specifically to a network element management system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A telecommunications network is typically comprised of a number of network elements. One example of a network element is a digital cross-connect system. A digital cross-connect system is a network device used by telecom carriers and large enterprises to switch and multiplex low-speed voice and data signals onto high-speed lines and vice versa. The digital cross connect is typically used to aggregate several T1 lines into a higher-speed electrical or optical line as well as to distribute signals to various destinations. For example, voice and data traffic may arrive at the cross-connect on the same facility, but be destined for different carriers. Voice traffic would be transmitted out one port, while data traffic goes out another.
Digital Cross-Connect Systems (DCS) typically consist of a rack with one or more shelves, where each shelf has a number of different cards/modules. The cards/modules can be configured to connect the incoming low speed lines with the outgoing high capacity lines. Over time the DCS may be upgraded by adding additional shelves and/or additional card/modules, or the DCS may be modified by reconfiguring the current cards/modules. To be able to upgrade or modify the DCS, an understanding of the current logical configuration of the DCS is required. The logical configuration of a DCS is the relationship between the current cards, shelves and modules, how the cards/modules and shelves relate to other cards/modules and shelves, and how the DCS logically identifies the links (logical identifiers) between the cards/modules and shelves.
Currently, determining the logical configuration of a DCS is a time consuming and error prone activity. One reason for this difficulty is that the physical location of a card/module in the shelf may not have any relationship with the logical configuration for the card/module.
Current software programs designed to aid with the determination of the logical configuration of a DCS may determine that a shelf has an open slot for a card/module, but do not determine the logical sub-distribution frame (SDF) address for the open slot. For example, the Tellabs 5500 Metro Watch product allows an engineer to determine that there are shelves installed with open slots for cards/modules, but it does not tell the engineer what the logical SDF address is for the slots and cards/modules.
Another problem with current management tools is that the physical dependencies between different cards/modules can not be determined. Therefore there is a need for a network element management system that overcomes these problems.